Small Change

NEW 35mm PRINT! ► “A comedy, a romance, a mystery — in a word: childhood — captured, distilled, and transformed effortlessly from sketchbook to symphony in the hands of a master named Francois Truffaut.” Wes Anderson, director of Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and the recent Fantastic Mr. Fox, offers high praise for Truffaut’s Small Change, one of his favourite films — screening here in a newly struck 35mm print. Childhood, and the relationship between children and adults, was one of Truffaut’s favourite subjects, as evidenced by earlier works such as The 400 Blows and The Wild Child. Made with a largely non-professional cast, and set in a small provincial town, Small Change presents a series of loosely connected vignettes revolving around a group of schoolchildren and their teacher. The work has been widely praised for its charm, wit, insight, and naturalism; although the odd churlish critic finds it marred by a sentimentality absent in Truffaut’s earlier treatments of childhood, audiences tend to love the film. “It is a film for children as well as of them, and so it re-creates the mythic, discontinuous, wondrous style of narrative that is characteristic of the best children’s stories. At the same time, it sees children as very much a part of the more cruel adult universe: childhood is not easy, even if it is humorous” (James Monaco). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 105 mins.